May 26, 2014

May 24, 2014

About 6 Weeks Left To Go

I see the twins are back. (I just wasted ENTIRELY too much of my evening crawling through that with the pause button).

UPDATE:
There appear to be a lot more characters, which can be problematic. On the other hand, Pyrrha features heavily in the OP so the season may have a focus on her, which is acceptable because Pyrrha is win.

The arm reversal between her and Jaune compared to the season 1 OP is a nice touch. It looks like JNPR are indeed going to be the duteragonists.

2
Good LORD that was awkwardly worded.
In the OP to season one Jaune is looking somberly up at the statue and Pyrrha puts her hand on his shoulder in a supportive gesture, foreshadowing how she gave him support (and flat out saved his ass) buying him time while he overcame the considerable obstacles he faced in getting his act together. In the second OP, this is reversed. Pyrrha is looking a bit forlorn and Jaune appears, placing his hand on her shoulder as if to say "I've got your back." This could be foreshadowing something or simply an acknowledgement that Jaune has really come a long way. In fact, despite being one of the B list characters, he's the only character who had significant on screen character development in volume one. (Weiss had a bit but her's was almost entirely off screen, in the EP song of episode 16).

Like the previous one, this trailer for the upcoming Yamato film has no animation. But it's 31 seconds long as opposed to 16. Also, there is music this time, music that will mean nothing to those who did not watch the old show. The rest of us however, are a bit enthused.

The original show, in addition to being funny, was a touching, beautifully portrayed love story that amongst all the hilarity, involved Rikka coming to terms with her loss and getting her act together. The sequel has her pretty much back to where she was for most of the series...except that Rikka and Yuta are definitely a couple. I confess that at first I thought the two of them were just joking with regard to Rikka's active fantasy world, but alas no, and no explanation is given for the regression. Were it not for specific references to the Christmas party in the first serie,s this show could easily have been set during the same time frame as that show...and it might have been more satisfying.

Whereas Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions is about moving forward and growing up, '...Heart Throb' is, in many ways, a renunciation of that. On the surface the show glorifies stability above all else and seems actively hostile to the notion of personal development. For instance, the new character Sophia comes dangerously close to character development...but dodges that bullet with great verve and skill. Great effort is made to ensure that everything remains exactly as it is at the beginning*. I know nothing about the source material for this show, but the this glaring difference makes me wonder if the sequel is a response to fan complaints.

However, the show is quite entertaining in its own right and it made me laugh out loud several times.

With the two main lovebirds relationship pretty much fixed, there is some development exploration of the other characters.

Nibutani in particular, actually comes off as quite likable and decent in this series. She is an important part of a rather unexpected dynamic in the show that it is a bit deeper and more nuanced in its view of Otakudom than one might expect.

Despite the show's overall tone of aggressive Otaku affirmation '...Heart Throb' is not entirely sanguine about the subject. There is a somewhat creepy cour (with VERY creepy undertones) that involves the implications of fandom as a cult and it's handled pretty well...imaginary magical battle notwithstanding.

The show is cute, wacky and often quite weird...

...and occasionally even weirder still.

While it is not quite as good as its predecessor in that it does little to advance the cast, it is still a thoroughly enjoyable show

*...well...except for Isshiki, who is last seen dealing with a development that might or might not be truly horrible for him...the writers are rather vague on that point.

May 11, 2014

They Couldn't Just Hire A Couple of Russians?

The Girls Und Panzer DVD has been sitting on my shelf for months and I suddenly realized I have time to look at it.

The dub is a bit uneven and rather rough at the beginning (Miho pronounces Oorai as O-O-R-I amongst other things) making it look like it was done on one take. To be fair, the voicework rapidly gets a lot better as the show progresses and Molly Searcy absolutely NAILS IT with her portayal of Mako. After about episode two the dub is pretty decent.

Then...suddenly.

They'd avoided the temptation of wacky accents...until the Pravda battle at which point there is an ill concieved attempt...from time to time...to affect something that probably sounded Slavic to somebody late one night in the studio when they were all strung out on Red Bull and Mountain Dew.

It gets worse...There is that moment in the Pravda battle that Crunchyroll edited out the Katushya song. Crunchyroll just cut the scene...the dub keeps the footage (minus the mouth movements) and replaces Katushya with an unrelated accordion solo.

" Well...THAT was regrettable. "

The accordion solo is present on the subtitled track too, indicating that they were not able to resolve the rights issue. However, it's unclear why the scene wasn't simply cut (like Crunchyroll did with the sub) as the result is most jarring.

Wait...

Can someone explain to me how a commie song from before 1945 is a copyright issue anyway.

Sentai has done some pretty good dubs (and Highschool of the Dead was absolutely superb) so this is more galling than it ought to be.

UPDATE: The dub on OAV release is actually excellent. Even when a silly accent raises its head, it's intentionally silly and fits perfectly.

In the Pravda battle, at the very end, they run Katyusha without vocals as background music during the scene with Anko and Hippo chasing the Pravda flag tank around that town. (And with Yukari up in the tower.)

3
Everyone wants to preserve their copyright if it's worth money--look at the dueling Marxists over in Europe, fighting over, ironically, the works of Marx himself.

Posted by: RickC at Sun May 11 20:03:38 2014 (0a7VZ)

4
They've done that before - I know that they had Turks to come in and do bit parts in Spriggan, and the Yugo the Negotiator dub has a lot of minor characters played by Urdu speakers. But yeah... nobody really noticed, huh?

"Katyusha" should have been PD in the US. However, like many USSR songs that got popular, song publishing companies published and copyrighted their own US versions. Soooo it's copyrighted in the US, or at least enough to make it annoying to hunt down a way to make it PD.

Also I think there have been some retroactive copyright things in the EU and Geneva that we've signed onto, and maybe Russia got roped into that too.

May 10, 2014

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions was an absolutely superb series, being both hilarious and poignant. It also had a satisfying ending that quite effectively wrapped things up, so I've been ponsdering the sequel with some trepidation.

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb is set just a few weeks after the end of the previous show and pretty much takes up where it left off. There is a bit of hand waving regards the progress Rikka seemed to make in the last episode and some hand waving to explain why a class concious climber like Nibutani is still hanging with these whackadoodles, and further hand waiving regards Dekimori's hair, but it otherwise continues the story, and, well, two episodes in, I've laughed out loud a few times.

1
As you are still watching it, I won't get too detailed here, but amongst last seasons series it was one of the better ones. You are correct regarding the hand waving and that is the biggest problem with the series, as far as I was concerned. The first series did such a wonderful job of moving her past the past that it was kind of sad to see them retro her a bit.

The napping competition is wonderful. They even manage to parody themselves a bit. Lovingly, I might add.

The new neighbor seems to fade as the series runs, but comes back towards the end and becomes a great character.

May 08, 2014

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

This film has a lot on it's plate. It's a sequel, a prequel, and a fairly pivitol stand alone thriller that moves the overall plot of the Avengers tie-in franchise quite a bit. It could easily have become a mess, but Captain America: Winter Soldier is a surprisingly solid film.

This film is a very interesting hybrid of superhero flick and spy thriller, with the latter predominating at first. The "superheroes" in this movie are not earthshakinglty powerful in comparison to a lot of others, being for the most part, just very skilled people. A good chunk of the movie has a sort of espionage vibe, but the threat the heroes find themselves fighting against is one of earth shaking gravity. Furthermore, the heroes are super-heroic, not so much in their power level, but definitely in their attitude. Three of the leads are fine examples of "The Cape"and the fact that they are decent, ethical people becomes much more obvious as well as pivotal to the plot as the film progresses. There are also plenty of references reminding the Marvel fans in the audience that this is firmly "in universe".

All in all, I was quite pleased with it. One minor spoiler; as with most of the films in this franchise, you'll want to stay for the credits.